Walter Arnold Kaufmann (1921–1980)

This anthology has been the first introduction to existentialism for English readers since it first appeared in 1956. It collects nine authors but devotes unequal amounts of attention to them, with the selections from Jaspers and Sartre being the longest. Every collection is a selection and always leaves room for discussion of what was included and left out. In this book, I missed Simone de Beauvoir and wondered about the inclusion of Rilke. Even Camus’s presence is questionable; he claimed he wasn’t an existentialist, nor did Sartre recognize him as one.
I was struck by the variation in readability, especially in the principal two authors represented. At times, Jaspers lapsed into jargon. I imagine a serious read of one of his books in German would involve coming to terms with him. With Sartre, it was more extreme. I had a hard time following the chapter on self-deception (“mauvaise foi”) from Being and Nothingness. Sartre seemed to pursue his own dialectic, negating every term he introduced. The lecture, “Existententialism is a Humanism,” on the other hand, was easily readable.… (more)